Field trips in college DO EXIST!!! La Alberca

So! I'm going to bombard you all with things to read because I'm procrastinating right now and instead of writing one of my term papers I've decided to write just as much information but in blog posts so all of you can procrastinate as well! =]

Newsflash! Field-trips in college DO EXIST!! On October 19th my Regionalism in Spain class went to a little town in the mountains an hour and a half outside of Salamanca, called La Alberca. La Alberca is  extremely old and has a lot of history to it. People have been living in the town since before the arrival of the Romans. The amount of religion here is staggering as well...there are crosses everywhere because during the exile of the Jews the town kept many of them hidden and in order to decrease suspicions the town had a HUGE catholic influence. You'll notice that in most of the pictures there is at least one cross visible.

The town has lots of traditions but one of the weirdest ones I thought was the fact that they have a wild pig running around the town until January and then they kill it and give it to a family to eat...and the next year they get a new one. Unfortunately it was raining the day we went so a) the pig was in protection...and b) all my pictures are dark =[

The second biggest plaza in La Alberca

Plaza Mayor...significantly different from ours :p

Old theatre that we watched a movie in after meeting the mayor of the town (our professor knows EVERYONE!)

Main church of the town

There are two actual skulls built into the little niche of the church. When a loved one dies or on the anniversary of their death, locals walk a route around the town that ends here and they light a single candle in remembrance. 

The streets were super narrow and the houses are super close so in the summer the streets stay cool and in the winter the heat of all the houses keeps the streets warm...er. 

It's really green because there is so much rain and it's cooler. It was cold and wet when we were there so our teacher bought us a loaf of freshly baked warm bread...some people stuck it on their noses to warm them....weirdos :p

Statue of the legendary pig and my teacher trying to take a picture of all of us.

What'd I tell you? Crosses everywhere

Right to the left of the last picture there was an inscription above a door. They inscriptions were everywhere but this was the only one a got a picture of. The locals would put inscriptions above their door saying that they were catholic or that they had for sure converted. Obviously some people put the inscriptions up even if they weren't, just to hide the fact that they were practicing another religion.

We went into a typical house from the 50's. The first floor was a barn, second was the bedrooms, third was the kitchen and fourth was the attic where the señora would cook bread and roast chestnuts. 

The house belonged to the man and woman standing on the ground. They raised their grandson (the groom) and now he and his wife own the house and operate it as a museum.

La Alberca was super cool (literally...ha! punny...I know I'm lame :p ) but I'm not so sure I'd go back there...there wasn't much to do there but the history of it all was interesting and meeting the mayor was interesting as well.

I'm gonna stop bombarding you with blog posts....for now :p I need to get some work done on this term paper for my Regionalism class (coincidently...)

I'll be back with more posts though! One about my last excursion with IES to Toledo and then one about from when my mom came to visit!! =]